Ryan sagged in his chair and drove the heels of his palms into his eye sockets. The most messed up hour of his life and it wasn’t about to end any time soon.

“Dude…”

And naturally, Matt would have to be there to rub it in his face.

“You realize you just signed on for 24-7 duty to that pill? Voluntarily!”

“Pretty much.”

“Ry?”

Ryan turned around. Matt wasn’t the only one witnessing his fall from sanity. Madi stood in the doorway, a worried look on her face. She was looking over the mess on the screens, the security feeds which were not going away – and could not until Ryan made this work – and at him like she was about to start crying. Not that he blamed her. If he were a chick, he’d probably cry to see this too.

“It’s okay, Mad, I got this.”

“You can’t stay here night and day.”

“I’ll… improvise. I can come up with some sort of standby setting.” But that wouldn’t be for a couple of days.

“Don’t worry, man, we got your back,” Matt said. “I saw a dusty old cot in the store room from the early days. We can fit it in here no problem.” Funny as ever. Bastard. He’d probably done this to get a laugh out of it.

“Thanks a lot.”

Matt shrugged humbly. “I live to serve.”

Madi punched him in the arm hard enough to make him yelp and dragged him away. Ryan took a breather before he seriously sat down with the code. A facility full of programmers under normal circumstances could have this done in a day. But these weren’t normal circumstances and he was pretty much on his own.

Ten and a half hours later, He’d put in two grocery orders, one food delivery, adjusted the house temperature, set timers to record shows on TV, sprinkled the lawn, wrote three letters of resignation to Celia and discarded each. He was going on five cups of coffee and two saltine crackers, his eyes were watering and his hands cramping.

But the environmental systems were up and linked so he didn’t have to physically monitor them anymore and he had a standby for the night that would record whatever orders Victoria Marlow gave like messages so he could replay them in the morning and do her bidding.

He learned a bit about her, too. She had a closet full of shoes but walked around barefoot. She had a house big enough for a family but she lived alone. She had a state of the art entertainment system in the living room but she spent most of her time in a little den with a worn rug in front of the fire place, e-reader in hand.

It was purely selfish to note all those things. Knowing it meant he could adjust the heating system to keep the floors warm so she wouldn’t complain of cold feet. He could concentrate his efforts in just a couple of rooms in the house where she actually lived and he knew to have the TV set to stream an e-book webpage when it was turned on, instead of trying to guess her favorite channel. It made his life just the slightest bit easier.

Someone had brought him the cot and Madi had gone to his place to get him a pillow and blanket and his toothbrush. Ryan Hotels and Resorts was now officially open for business.

God, he didn’t even realize how exhausted he was until he stopped. Someone had brought him a microwaved dinner which had already gone cold but he ate it anyway, starved for any kind of sustenance. The Marlow house was quiet now. Night lights were on, security engaged, windows and doors closed for the night, except for the bedroom window she’d left slightly ajar to let in the night air.

It was late. Everyone else had already left, with the exception of a handful of night owls keeping an eye on the other side of the globe. Ryan had used to think they’d pulled the short straw. Not so much anymore.

He watched Victoria – after all she’d put him through today he was not about to address her by anything but her first name – cook herself dinner and read for a while. Watched her emerge from the bathroom in a man’s t-shirt and shorts, put on lotion and climb into bed. When the lights turned off, he watched her sleep until his eyelids became too heavy to hold up anymore.

With the ready made cot calling his name, Ryan fell asleep at his desk to the sight of Victoria curling on her side as though cold.

He dreamed of winter and snow, in a bleak, empty landscape with symbols and codes shining above him like stars.

Virtual Copyright 2011 Alianne Donnelly, all rights reserved, may not be reprinted or reproduced in any manner, written, electronic, or otherwise without express permission from Alianne Donnelly.

Subsystems – firewalled. Processors – garbage. Logic – a veritable absence of one.

Ryan had never had a panic attack before. It wasn’t so bad, really. His brain was buzzing, his face felt numb, he hadn’t moved at all in a few minutes but it felt like he was floating.

Then that buzzing became louder and louder and he realized it was a voice. The woman – her severely lacking file said her name was Victoria Marlow – was yelling through the speaker box so loud there was feedback.

It jarred him back to reality, time moved from its pleasant standstill to too fast forward. Heartbeat jackhammering through his veins he shifted his brain into high gear damage control.

While Miss Marlow yelled herself hoarse, he did a quick survey of her systems again. The only thing that worked was the main uplink. He’d have to reprogram everything remotely from here. That could take weeks! What was he supposed to do in the mean time? Be her on-call servant?

Ryan stopped typing. The virtual version of him was spinning on one of the screens. It was the first one he’d scanned in and the only one he had access to. After a brief analysis, he shrugged philosophically. No other choice.

He pulled up the graphics program, dressed himself in a suit, tweaked minor details to make it look real and pushed the image across the uplink to the damaged system. He prayed the entire time he watched the status bar. 100%. Thank God.

Ryan turned on his headset. “Uh, okay, sorry for the delay.”

“Apology not accepted,” she growled back.

He didn’t blame her. “I don’t know how this happened but it seems your home was never properly entered into our system. We are working on getting it up and running for you. I will restart your unit from here and when it boots up you should be able to hail your concierge.”

“It better work this time.”

Ryan did a quick patch-up with the video/audio and made sure the security was linked up properly before he started the damn thing.

For five whole minutes while it booted up Ryan saw nothing and heard nothing. Longest five minutes of his life.

A huge weight dropped from his shoulders when he saw the house again. The irate owner was in the living room tapping her foot. He heard her say the call word and initiated the holograph.

Taking a deep breath, he prepared for the longest, most complicated, well-intentioned con play ever devised.

Because until he could fix Miss Marlow’s system, he was on call to do her bidding. They would be getting to know each other really well. She just wouldn’t know about it.

“Good afternoon. And welcome to your new home.”

Tori stared at the holograph that flickered into being in the middle of the room. They didn’t tell her it would look so real. Except for the beams of light converging on him from every corner of the room , the guy looked … done.

“Hi,” she said lamely. He was even good looking! She’d expected some old British type with a moustache and white gloves. But this guy was her age, tall, with a twinkle in his eye and a hint of a wicked smile tucked into the corner of his mouth. In his suit, with his hair just a little tousled, he looked good enough to eat.

This was weirding her out. “Is the tech guy still there?”

“I have troubleshooting and repair capabilities. Is there something you would like to address?”

Wow, it actually understood. That was unnerving. “Uh… you got a name?”

“A name has not been assigned.”

“Assign one,” she said. She was not about to christen a fully grown stranger, even if he was just a machine. Tori had worked her way up to the luxuries she now enjoyed. Yeah, she had the means to keep this place lavish but inside she was still the girl who had to do it herself because no one else would. Now it hat just changed to no one else could be trusted. And here was this person without a name, who for all intents and purposes would be living with her from now on and taking care of her needs. This would take some serious getting used to.

“Assigning. Ryan. Confirm?”

“Sure, yeah, that works.” He looked like a Ryan.

“Is there anything I can assist you with today?”

“Yeah, lose the suit.” She gasped at how low her voice came out. “It’s weird,” she added hastily.

“Confirmed.” The image flickered and his clothes disappeared, leaving him in nothing but boxers for all of three seconds.

Tori stared. Whew. Hel-lo Ryan. She wouldn’t mind him walking around like that. Well, okay that was a lie. She might be currently on a dry spell in her love life but she refused to become one of those desperate women who needed a hot young bod running around half naked to get a thrill. She had more class than that.

Ryan was dressed again in jeans and a shirt with the sleeves rolled up. “Is this acceptable?” Had his voice changed?

She looked him over with a critical eye. “Could use some accessories but you’ll do.”

A wide leather cuff appeared on his wrist. Okay, that was a little freaky.

She cleared her throat. “So is everything working now?”

“Functionality is at 98%. All essential systems operational. You may experience some lag time while I learn your habits and preferences.”

“Fine, whatever.” Tori couldn’t get over this. Like having a real housekeeper! Except he wouldn’t look at her. The holograph looked real, his mouth moved when he talked, but his eyes were fixed and didn’t follow her. For some reason it bugged the hell out of her. “That’ll be all for now.” She winced at her imperial tone. Had an apology on the tip of her tongue but then remembered he wasn’t really real. She still felt bad.

Ryan nodded. “To call me, just say my name.” And with a teasing smirk, he disappeared.

Virtual Copyright 2011 Alianne Donnelly, all rights reserved, may not be reprinted or reproduced in any manner, written, electronic, or otherwise without express permission from Alianne Donnelly.

“Hello? Hellooo…. Anyone there? Hello!”

“Uh, yeah, I’m here.”

Finally! “Where the hell have you been?” Tori yelled at the mic. “I’ve been calling for half an hour. This is your idea of a flawless system?” Her bare feet were freezing on the concrete floor and her strappy tank wasn’t nearly enough to keep the chill away. She could poke someone’s eye out with a nipple now and it just pissed her off even more.

“I apologize, ma’am, we’re experiencing some… technical difficulties.” Incompetent jerkoff.

“Why is your voice all warbled?” This thing was ridiculous. This was not how tech support should look – or sound! She could hardly understand the guy. If he told her to go up and reboot the system somehow and come back she would smash this box to pieces and then track him down and shove it up his ass.

“It is? Er,… I’m sorry I—”

“Stop apologizing,” she snapped, raising up on her toes to get more blood flowing through them. “I am two phone calls away from suing all your asses for this piece of crap. It cost me a fortune and now it won’t even start up. Fix it!”

“Wow, okay, let me see what’s up. Hold please.”

The line, such as it was, went dead.

He was so going down.

Shitshitshitshitshitshitshit!

Ryan typed furiously to bring up the specs to a system he had never seen before. Number thirteen. Was that some kind of joke? Aw, what the hell was this! Every screen he brought up looked like it was composed by a five year old. He couldn’t make heads or tails of it, sure as hell hadn’t written it.

In a last ditch attempt to salvage the situation, he broke protocol, overrode the system and pulled up the camera feeds. Fifty one homes, over three hundred cameras filled the screen like dominoes. A giant mosaic of lives from all over the world. He ignored the mess because if he looked at it his brain would shut down in self-preservation.

When all else fails, go back to the basics. SQL was his god. He filtered the results to narrow down the results again and again until he was left with one house. By some miracle he managed to engage the motion detector to find the woman he was speaking to and one single video feed filled the screen.

Ryan did a double take. The woman was hopping from foot to foot in front of the breaker box. Her back was to him but it was one hell of a view. If he wasn’t freaking out right now he’d take a moment to appreciate it.

“Damn boy,” Matt said. He wasn’t looking at the woman but at the code scrolling across a different screen. “Someone screwed ya big time.” He pointed to a line towards the top. Ryan’s name was there, implicating him as surely as if he’d left a fingerprint. Only he’d never seen this stuff before.

“Go get Celia,” he told Matt.

“Holy shit, is that her?”

“Shut up and go get her.”

Matt made a face. “You sure you wanna do that?”

“Now!” Christ, he was in such deep shit.

“Hey, what the hell?” the woman’s voice blared through the speakers. Clear as bells. He had no idea why she couldn’t hear him that clearly. “Are you even still there?”

Matt patted him on the back. “You’re up, slugger,” he said helpfully and went. Hopefully to get Celia.

Ryan unmuted his mic. “Yeah, still here. Hold please.”

“Are you kid—” He cut off the audio.

Celia entered like a general walking onto the battlefield. “Talk to me.” She’d know what to do. They’d apologize to the woman, send her a full refund and move on with the day. That was the diplomatic thing to do.

Confident that their fearless leader would come up with a solution, Ryan slumped in his seat. “I have no clue. Look at this mess! I don’t even know where the hell it came from.”

Celia scanned each screen, scrolled through a batch of code. “Can you fix it?”

Ryan’s jaw dropped. “Seriously?”

She just looked at him like he was wasting her time.

“Uh, in about four months working non stop, maybe,” he said dryly.

She nodded. “Fake it until it’s done.”

“What?”

“We can’t risk the bad press. That pretty face goes public with how we messed up, we’re over before we can even get off the ground. So you need to fix this. Get it working. Make her happy. You do whatever it takes, got it? I want to see a satisfied customer by 2pm.” And she walked out.

Shit.

What the hell was he supposed to do?

Virtual Copyright 2011 Alianne Donnelly, all rights reserved, may not be reprinted or reproduced in any manner, written, electronic, or otherwise without express permission from Alianne Donnelly.

Ryan had a techno remix of Für Elise playing on his phone. Messenger bag slung over his shoulder he took his time strolling through the campus garden to enjoy the morning sun before he ducked into his pod for the day. He had some ideas on how to improve the holograph projectors to make the images move more like real people.

“Ry-Ry!” Madi greeted. “How’s my favorite snugglebum?” She made a kissy face and reached for his cheek.

“Sis,” he said, rearing away, “I love you. But if you call me a snugglebum at work again I will make your husband a widower.”

Madi pouted. “Sourpuss.”

Ryan glared. “Don’t call me that, either.”

They looked at each other for a moment. Madi pushed her lower lip out as far as it would go and gave him her best puppy eyes. He relented and kissed her cheek. “See you at lunch.”

“Bye Ry!” she called after him so loud everyone in the lobby stopped to stare.

Ryan didn’t even miss a beat. “I have no idea who that is.”

Command central was humming with the song of a well oiled machine. Celia was at the helm, a mug of coffee in her hand, watching over her beehive. “Punctuality makes kings, Ryan,” she said without looking at him. Eyes at the back of her head.

“I’m” – he checked his watch – “seventy four seconds late.”

She nodded slowly, distractedly.

Ryan shrugged and continued on to his pod. His own system kicked in as soon as he walked through the door. BlueTooth engaged and the last notes of Apocalyptica’s Path blared through the speakers instead of his phone. He loved this place.

The machines never powered off so they were all ready to go. He dropped his bag on the floor and stepped into the scanner. There was something he was itching to try out. If it worked, he’d be a millionaire.

Lights passed over him from all sides and the 3D image of him appeared on one of the computer screens. “Well, hello handsome.”

“Making home movies again?”

“Yeah, Matt, I figured I’d throw you a bone since you can’t have me in real life.”

Matt gagged. “You’re sick, dude.”

Ryan grinned. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me!”

“Okay, fine, I’ll leave you to your dirty flicks. Was just supposed to tell you something and go back anyway.”

Ryan waited. “Well? What already?”

Matt frowned. “Wha? Oh, right. There’s some kind of blooping noise coming from your litter. Celia wants you to check that puppy out.”

Ryan frowned. He sat at his keyboard and pulled up the diagnostics screen.

Shit.

Oh, shit!

Behind him, Matt whistled. “Duuuude… you are so dead!”

Virtual Copyright 2011 Alianne Donnelly, all rights reserved, may not be reprinted or reproduced in any manner, written, electronic, or otherwise without express permission from Alianne Donnelly.